New Orleans Cop Faces Firing For Leaving To Help Relatives

By |September 15, 2005

Tony Mitchell, a New Orleans police officer for nine years, says he was forced to make a choice: his grandmother or his honor as a police officer, reports the Washington Post. Mitchell was listed as one of nearly 400 police missing from their posts (of a force of 1,750) after Hurricane Katrina. Police Superintendent P. Edwin Compass III said he does not know why so many police officers remain missing. Some may have died or still cannot reach their stations, he said.

Mitchell, 35. spent six days trying to patrol the hellhole of the Louisiana Superdome evacuation center after the storm. When he heard that his mother, 76, and grandmother, 103, were in a hospital, he hurried to retrieve them and move them to a relative’s home. His supervisor called his cell phone. “He told me it was very noble and honorable to take care of my grandmother, but if I was not at roll call in 10 minutes, I was fired.” Until charges are formally brought, he is back on the force but assigned to handing out used clothes to fellow officers still working round the clock. Capt. Marlon Defillo, a police spokesman, said, “Once this whole crisis is over, we will have an opportunity to evaluate each one on a case-by-case basis.”

The legislation marks a major change for Republicans, who long hve embraced a law-and-order rallying cry. Now many GOP senators argue for rehabilitating more offenders rather than long-time incarceration.

An Arizona doctor argues that the government should have learned from previous federal anti-drug strategies that blanket prohibition doesn’t work. He calls for scrapping attempts to curtail opioids and replacing it with “harm reduction” policies.

Expensive medications for inmates can lead to substandard care and delays in treatment, and that may have lasting—even deadly—consequences for incarcerated individuals, writes a prison health care advocate.

Murder rates in the nation’s 30 largest cities are projected to fall by nearly 6 percent this year according to the latest data, undercutting claims that the nation is experiencing a “crime wave,” says the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

School safety commission proposes ending a federal guideline telling schools not to punish minorities at higher rates. The panel largely sidestepped issues relating to guns, although it favors arming some school personnel.